By Dr. Serkan Toto – On Japan's Game Industry
Rakuten has posted a press release in English about “Edy Autocharge”, a new feature that was added to the company’s Edy app on Android (“Edy” is a prepaid e-money service, more info here). With the new feature, a Rakuten user’s balance is checked every hour and once it falls beneath a...
The smartphone revolution Japan is seeing can’t be ignored by Rakuten, the country’s biggest online mall. After having released a special shopping app for the iPhone in February, Rakuten just released a counterpart for Android. Rakuten says there are two things especially worth...
Kakaku has released [ENG, PDF] new online access information on its most important properties for March 2011, the eponymous price comparison portal and restaurant guide (and Gourmet Navigator competitor) Tabelog. Kakaku can be pretty happy about the development on a year-on-year basis, even though...
Another sign that Facebook Japan is becoming more and more visible: Tokyo-based Internet company GMO has raised (via their investment subsidiary GMO Venture Partners) a fund exclusively for startups working on e-commerce solutions on Facebook (“F-Commerce”). Initially, GMO is ready to...
Two investment-related news items from CyberAgent today: first, the decision to invest $120 million in startups in China and Taiwan and later the announcement to invest in Vietnam-based online shopping mall Vatgia.com. According to CyberAgent VC subsidiary CyberAgent Ventures, Vatgia.com is...
Kakaku, which runs Japan’s leading price comparison engine of the same name, has released [ENG, PDF] website access stats for its two biggest properties, Kakaku itself and restaurant guide Tabelog. In a nutshell, things are looking pretty good on a year-on-year basis. Kakaku.com saw 30.11...
By Dr. Serkan Toto – On Japan's Game Industry